


It sure as hell ain't normal but we deal, we deal

by falloutboiruto



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic!Mitsuki, Developing Friendships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 19:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falloutboiruto/pseuds/falloutboiruto
Summary: A retrospective look back on the Chuunin exams, focusing on Mitsuki's internal turmoil and on the one-sided animosity between him and Shinki of the Hidden Sand.





	It sure as hell ain't normal but we deal, we deal

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome to my like 7th mitsuki angst fanfic. he's just too interesting as a character with his weird kind of traumatic convoluted backstory i tell you
> 
> disclaimer: this fanfic does deal with some mental health stuff such a symptoms of ptsd and also a negative interpretation of mitsuki's relationship with orochimaru. it's not very graphic tho
> 
> title from the panic at the disco song "camisado"  
> brainstormed with my bff @reaperduckling

After beating that Toroi kid from the Hidden Cloud in the tournament part of the Chuunin exams by snake-wrestling him to the ground, Mitsuki decided that there was no point in gloating. However, during the thirty-minute recess before the semi-finals, Toroi waved at him from a distance as if he wanted to talk to him.

“Is he some kind of sore loser or something?” Boruto muttered, but Mitsuki decided to speak to Toroi alone anyway with Boruto and Sarada waiting out of hearing range.

“Hey, uh… Mitsuki, right? You beat me fair and square. But I have a question…” Toroi said awkwardly. “Do you like reptiles in general or just snakes? It’s just that I have a pet iguana called Killer Beeguana at home. He’s named after a rapper.”

“Sounds cool,” Mitsuki said.

“You don’t have to make fun of me, I know it’s weird!” Toroi said, blushing.

Mitsuki had no idea what had just happened. Was Toroi’s reaction because he had misread Mitsuki’s lack-of-inflection as sarcasm, a concept that Mitsuki dreaded and didn’t understand at all?

“Uh, I’m not being sarcastic if that’s what you think. I actually really like all kinds of reptiles,” Mitsuki responded, trying to mend the situation.

“You do?” Toroi said, eyes shining in amazement. “Killer Beeguana lives in a terrarium that takes up the majority of my room though, not like your snakes that uh… live inside your shirt sleeves?”

“Actually my snakes technically ‘live’ inside my body in chakra form until I summon them at will. I see them more as an extension of myself and/or tools rather than pets. But I think it’s very interesting to think of an animal as a pet,” Mitsuki said.

“Oh. So you see them more as… uh, like weapons rather than companions?”

“I see my snakes more like you would look at your own hands and feet. But uh….” Mitsuki said, getting a feeling that he was ‘oversharing’ again. “Do you have any pictures of Killer Beeguana?”

“Yes, I do!” Toroi said, and pulling his cellphone to show him pictures of his famed iguana while almost crying with happiness. There was a lot of snot on Toroi’s face, but Mitsuki still got close enough to look at the pictures on his phone. They were pretty cool.

“That’s pretty cool,” Mitsuki said. This made Toroi squeal with excitement and he pulled Mitsuki into a bro-hug.

“Thanks for talking to me about reptiles, dude! You really aren’t a bad person even though Shinki said so!” Toroi squealed before quickly slapping his hands over of his mouth. “Crap, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that he thought that…”

“Does Shinki of the Hidden Sand think that I’m a ‘bad person’? That’s really interesting,” Mitsuki said. Honestly, it really was extremely interesting since it explained about as much as it opened up questions. A mystery, if you will. Toroi continued to apologize to him profusely several times, but Mitsuki assured him that he didn’t actually care. His would-be new friend backed away awkwardly, and Mitsuki returned to Sarada and Boruto.

“That seemed to be a whirlwind of a conversation,” Sarada commented.

“Yeah, he seemed to really freak out there for a while. What did you guys talk about?” Boruto asked.

“Reptiles,” Mitsuki answered simply.

Sarada and Boruto gave him some strange looks, but Mitsuki assumed that part about Shinki disliking him probably wouldn’t come up anyway in their upcoming tournament match. Why would it?

-*-

Shinki having some sort of grudge against Mitsuki actually did come up very soon thereafter in their battle, and how. Based on what Mitsuki knew about the past relationship between the Hidden Sand and the Hidden Leaf, he had an inkling of an idea of what could be the problem. Namely, his parent’s past actions towards one the Hidden Sand’s past Kazekages. A specific kind of action called cold-blooded murder.

Well, that clearly sucked, but it had kind of nothing to do with Mitsuki as an individual. Sure, his parent was on permanent house arrest for a reason, but they had never hurt Mitsuki, so there was no real need for him to even care about it. Or at least, the hurt they had inflicted on Mitsuki had never been personal ~~and they had never meant it like that, and they actually did care deep down probably somewhat at least a little bit, and they were usually nice to him even though Mitsuki had a feeling that their relationship wasn’t normal per se based on observing the family dynamics of his friends, but it had all probably been his own fault somehow anyway~~ so Mitsuki did not care at all.

Shinki punching him in the stomach really did hurt a lot though. Mitsuki was clearly outmatched in every way, and the imminent threat of getting shanked by a spear made out of iron sand had great potential to hurt even more. So, he had to choose:

  1. He could try to win the tournament match by activating his Sage Power, maybe win but also maybe die a horrible stab wound-related death, but in any case not be able to stay in the Hidden Leaf anymore and ~~possibly self-destructing á la Curse Mark and being replaced with a clone brother.~~
  2. Forfeit the match, stay in Hidden Leaf with Boruto and the others. Boruto was the main motivator, but Sarada was also partly a reason. Just not as much.



The choice wasn't hard to make.

“I totally misjudged you,” Shinki coughed out after picking his slack jaw up from the ground (metaphorically speaking) and being crowned the winner of the match by default.

Then everything was all fine and dandy until the next day when Boruto was revealed to have been cheating on his exams/tournament matches with some kind of Scientific Ninja Tech. This didn’t drastically change Mitsuki’s already extremely high opinion of Boruto at all, as a matter of fact, it remained unchanged. This new development was just as interesting as most of Boruto’s Sarada-dubbed ‘bad life choices’ were.

Boruto did seem pretty upset about it though, but it seemed to be more about his relationship with the 7th Hokage so Mitsuki made the decision to just stay out of it in the future. Anyways, he was feeling as excited as can be until everything changed when the Otsutsuki Clan attacked.

-*-

Waking up in a hospital bed was extremely distressing until Sarada explained to Mitsuki where Boruto actually was (in danger again on a mission to save the 7th Hokage). Logically this fact would be even more distressing, but Boruto was evidently in good company and it’s not like Five Kage would let a child take on a dangerous role in the fight towards the Otsutsuki Clan. So things were probably going to be fine.

Mitsuki was suddenly jolted out of his thoughts by the door creaking open and a quasi-familiar face coming into view.

“Shinki? Why are you here?” Mitsuki asked.

“Uh, the scary Uchiha girl from your team punched me in the face and forced me to apologize to that other girl from the Hidden Leaf and to, uh, you…” Shinki said, shifting around nervously. "The reason I was so hard on you was that I know that you're the son of Orochimaru. I’m sorry I put you in the hospital, and I promise I won’t tell anyone else about your family background,” he continued and awkwardly placed the bouquet of lovely tulips he was carrying in a vase on the nightstand beside Mitsuki’s hospital bed.

“Don’t worry, you’re actually not the reason I’m in the hospital. I’m genetically engineered to heal at an advanced rate so one or two broken ribs would normally not be that big of a problem. I’m here because I was attacked by a member of the Otsutsuki Clan, but I will be all better soon enough,” Mitsuki said.

“I literally tried to kill you, that wasn’t right of me,” Shinki continued to apologize only slightly frantically. Mitsuki wondered if Shinki’s complete shift in mannerisms and behavior could be explained by Sarada possibly skulking around the outside corridor, ready to punch him again if Shinki didn’t apologize properly. Mitsuki, however, didn’t deem it necessary.

“I guess not, but I have been in scarier situations. I didn’t actually think that I was going to die like that one other time during the experi-“ he said, but suddenly stopped talking because his visi ~~on suddenly went pitch black and he couldn’t stop thinking about it and it was like he was there all over again and being threatened with murder-by samurai sword and it hadn’t even been real but it had felt like it, he had been foolish to get tricked by it in the first place and speaking of being tricked, were the overwhelming amount of things he felt about Boruto even his own thoughts in the first place~~

Suddenly the bright lights in the hospital room were blinding him again and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Shinki staring at him worriedly.

“Wh-what happened? Should I get a nurse or something?”

“Uh. Maybe?” Mitsuki mumbled.

Sarada suddenly and loudly burst through the door, proving Mitsuki’s theory about her eavesdropping on their conversation, but also making a lot of noise that Mitsuki could barely stand because of his arms momentarily being too weak to lift to cover his ears.

“What did you do this time, Shinki?” said Sarada while aggressively and violently grabbing him by the collar of his iron sand coat.

“Nothing, Lady Sarada!” Shinki squeaked like a mouse tightly caught in a death trap.

“I just spaced out. I usually don’t,” Mitsuki tried to explain.

“So Shinki didn’t say anything mean to you? Hm?” Sarada said, punctuating each word with shaking Shinki so harshly that his whole body shook.

“No, I just thought about something I didn’t want to think about. It’s fine,” Mitsuki said.

Sarada reluctantly put Shinki down again and he quickly scampered out of the room while making way too much noise(whimpering in fright and the door then slamming shut behind him as he ran out the room).

“What was it that you didn’t want to think about? Do you mean when you got hurt?” Sarada asked sympathetically.

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry! The Five Kage, my Dad… and Boruto I guess, will soon defeat the Otsutsuki! They’ll be back in no time and everything will go back to normal,” Sarada cheered with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and impatiently tapped her fingers against the nightstand in an uneven rhythm.

That hadn’t been what Mitsuki had meant at all. He was actually mostly ok with Boruto fighting the Otsutsuki(he obviously wouldn’t be involved with the actual fighting, it wasn’t like Boruto yet possessed some kind of mysterious power that could deal the finishing blow to a bunch of alien supervillains, right?)

But it wasn’t like Mitsuki could ever even begin to explain. And it wasn’t like Sarada would ever understand, even if he did try. If she found out, she and Boruto would probably just abandon him out of disgust for his obvious dumbness and wrongness. There was simply no point.

So Mitsuki just smiled and nodded.

-*-

Well, it turned out that Mitsuki had been completely wrong about everything. Boruto and Sarada desperately wanted him to explain and when he finally did, they understood.

Maybe not completely, but they tried.

They were once again at Thunder Burger after having completed another mission. Boruto was scarfing down his burger with the gusto of a grizzly bear rooting through a garbage can so intensely that a pickle went up his nose.

“That’s disgusting!” Sarada giggled while covering her face with her hands.

“It really is,” Mitsuki said while feeling almost fascinated with how gross it was.

“What am I supposed to do now? The pickle can’t stay in my nose forever but I can’t pull it out either, it would just be way too icky! I’m having an existential crisis as we speak!” Boruto exclaimed not only overdramatically but also quite nasally because of his stuffy nose. It was quite the combo, so Mitsuki joined Sarada in her infectious laughter.

“Yeah, I’m just gonna go into the bathroom and do it quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. See you losers later!” Boruto said while hurriedly storming away in the direction of the said restroom.

Sarada keeled over the table and banged her fist on it in time with her harsh intakes of breath. Mitsuki’s stomach was starting to cramp.

It was just really, really funny.

This was what Mitsuki truly wanted to focus on, not his parent tricking him in the past. And with the support of his best friends, he now could leave that past behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave kudos and comment if you've enjoyed this :)


End file.
